Clarins 230

I'm sure many of you know what Clarins 230 is. For those of you that don't, Clarins 230 is one of the rarest nail polishes out there! It has been discontinued for quite some time and it is quite gorgeous. Because of this, it often goes for exorbitant prices on eBay.

Lucky for ME I have an amazing and generous benefactor... my boyfriend! He got me this polish for Christmas, and it was a lovely gift because he knew that I never would have bought it for myself.

Clarins 230 is incredibly sheer, and is meant to be layered! I experimented with a lot of layering combinations. I tried mainly reds and purples, to compliment the red sparkle of 230. But the only one that really spoke to me was a combination that I had seen on The Polishaholic -- Clarins 230 over Revlon Royal.

The blue jelly of Royal gives this manicure a electric brightness, while the sparkle of Clarins mutes the blue just enough. The color contrasted enough that it wasn't just red sparkle sitting on top of a red polish. It was brilliant, really.

Here is the look blurred, so you can get an idea of how sparkly it actually is.

Part of what makes 230 so special, besides being honestly the most sparkly polish that I own, is that the pigment changes colors at certain angles. When the light hits it right, 230 blooms into an electric green sparkle.

It. Is. Amazing.

Here is the beginning of the transition from fiery red orange to green. If you look on my fourth and pinky fingers you can see a sort of amber color before the green.

And here is the green in its full glory. Isn't it marvelous? The great thing about using Revlon Royal as the base is that it goes beautifully with the green, as well. The Polishaholic is a genius for putting this combination together!

Not going to lie to you guys though, this was absolutely the most difficult polish I have ever tried to photograph. I must have taken so so many photos to get it to show up properly, and even then I had to combine a few different white balances for each photo to get both my skin tone and the polish to look nice together. And even still, these photographs don't QUITE capture the magic of this polish! I think I managed to get pretty, close, though.

I am grateful to have received this lovely beauty as a gift. I am excited to use it in a number of other layering combinations in the future. :)

Congrats on the six months, Sarah! I own maybe two different nail polishes, and very rarely do my nails yet your blog is one of my favorites to follow. Super top notch job with your creativity and skill, and the quality with which you photograph your gorgeous manicures! Here's to many more happy posts :)

The cult of this polish is well-known, but what I want to know is, why doesn't Clarins produce it again? They have a definite money-maker on their hands. It seems odd that they wouldn't take advantage of it!

It's funny, I saw this in debinhams when i was probably between 12-14 years old. It was super shiny and my gran bought it for me. I wore it all the time, eventually it was left in the back of a drawer. I dug it out recently (12 years later) and thought "I should get some more of this so i can wear it again", my search comes to here, and i'm kinda sad i have half a bottle left and no way to replenish it.